EARLY NEW YORK 











1^ 






k 






r 






*±KJ 



■•^tUjj.^XiAi' 



i*^ 



An Address by 

HON. ROBERT B. ROOSEVELT 

delivered before 

THE NEW YORK SOCIETY 

OF THE 

ORDER OF THE FOUNDERS AND 
PATRIOTS OF AMERICA 

January 15, 1904 





An Address by 

HON. ROBERT B. ROOSEVELT 

delivered before 

THE NEW YORK SOCIETY 

OF THE 

ORDER OF THE FOUNDERS AND 
PATRIOTS OF AMERICA 

January 15, 7904 



THE NEW YORK SOCIETY 

OF THE 

Order of the Founders and Patriots of America 



OFFICERS 

FOR THE YEAR ENDING APRIL 19, 1904 

Governor 
Hon. ROBERT B. ROOSEVELT 

Deputy- Governor 
THEODORE FITCH 

Chaplain 
Rev. GEORGE B. SPALDING, D. D. 

Secretary 
SAMUEL VICTOR CONSTANT 

Treasurer 
HENRY DUHRING MILLER 

State Attorney 
WALTER SETH LOGAN 

Registrar 
TEUNIS D. HUNTTING 

Geneaolgist 
COLGATE HOYT 

Historian 
JOHN ELDERKIN 

Councillors 
MILO MERRICK BELDING, Jr. 

HENRY LINCOLN MORRIS 

Col. HENRY W. SACKETT 

EDWARD PAYSON CONE 
Hon. WILLIAM WINTON GOODRICH 
WILLIAM A. MARBLE 

THEODORE GILMAN 

HOWARD SUMNER ROBBINS 

JAMES LE BARON WILLARD 



Note 

The following address was delivered by the Hon. 
Robert B. Roosevelt, Governor of the New York 
Society of the Order, before said Society, at a meet- 
ing held in the Hotel Manhattan, New York City, 
Friday evening, January 15, 1904. Its publication 
was directed by the New York Society of the Order of 
the Founders and Patriots of America. 



u & 



jftbeaftfast for (f5od and ®o\xntx%." 



EARLY NEW YORK 

BY 
HON. ROBERT B. ROOSEVELT 



T AM fond of the city of New York, and yet, if you ask me 
* why, I do not know that I could tell. I am fond and proud of 
the city ; I have seen it grow from a very little place, scarcely 
more than a fair-sized village to a very big place ; one of the 
three biggest cities in the world. I don't think, however, that 
its mere "bigness " has much to do with my affection for it. 

It is my home, and as such I know it at least partially, for it is 
expanding even beyond my acquaintanceship. So many of its 
inhabitants are my friends, so many of them seem to know me, 
and I know so many of them. And then they are the best people in 
the world, the most generous, the most intelligent, most public- 
spirited, most upright, most philanthropic. It is not that here 
alone art, and music, and literature, wealth, sociability, enter- 
prise, have their natural abiding place as in no other city of the 
continent. There is something more than all this. I think I 
must be fond of New York because I and my forbears before 
me have been part of it for many generations. A friend, who is 
of a poetical disposition, hearing that I was to speak to you, 
sends me these lines, which perhaps cover my case. 

Why do I love New York? My dear, 

Well, were my father here, 
And his, and his, they three and I 

Together might make fit reply. 

My ancestors, however, would run back to a good many more 
than three. 

If there is one thing for which a Founder and Patriot longs, it is 
for facts. When, and Where, and Who, and What are his favorite 
conundrums, and the charming inquisitive female Founder sur- 
passes the male in that as she does in all things, and is even 
more omniverous of dry details. So I shall divide my address 



8 Early New York 

into two parts: Facts and Fancies. First, the hard dry details 
of history, mostly false or mis-stated, and then the dreams 
of fancy — the revelling in " What might have been " — or may 
yet be. 

Hendrick Hudson, the old Dutch navigator, sailing along the 
coast in his vessel, the " Half Moon," in a vain search for the 
Northwest passage to somewhere, he did not have the least idea 
where, discovered the beautiful bay and river to which he gave 
his name. This is accepted history just as it is written for 
our guileless and unsuspicious youth, only it contains a few 
errors. Hendrick Hudson was not a Dutch navigator at all, but 
an English one; his name was not Hendrick, but Henry. He 
did not discover the bay or river, both of which had been dis- 
covered by the Florentine sailor Verrazano in 1529, and by the 
hardy Norsemen before him. We rarely call either the river or 
bay after Hudson in these times, one being the North River, 
the other New York Bay, so perhaps it doesn't much matter after 
all whether he discovered them or not. 

There is more doubt and dispute still about thetimeand manner 
of the settling of our great and good city. Hudson only looked, 
and loved and sailed away. There was no Northwest passage, 
and like a true sailor, he would not accept West or North, not 
even nor-nor-west itself for the Northwest he was sailing for, 
and so Manhattan Island was left deserted in all her loveliness 
like a second inanimate Dido. Others followed Hudson, for it 
had got to be the habit of travelling sailsmen to explore strange 
coasts and devious ways. One Christiansen, whose name does 
not seem to have stuck to anything; Block, from whom Block 
Island is named; May, from whom perhaps we get our pleasant 
Spring weather, found their intruding ways here and were 
captured by the attractions of our shores, and determined to 
settle down and grow up with the country. 

Hendrick Hudson, of whom it is even alleged by his detractors 
that he had read about the discovery of New Netherlands, and 
had come over with a map in his capacious pocket, sailed into 
the Hudson River on September 2, 1609, in the Dutch vessel, 
the " Half Moon." So far, so good ; but it is generally said that 
he was in the employ of the Dutch West India Company. As 
that company was not chartered till June 3, 1621, here we strike 
the first rock, so to speak. He was employed by the Dutch 



Early New York 9 

East India Company, which was succeeded by the New Nether- 
lands Trading Company, and after that came the West India 
Company, the first two being purely trading companies with no 
political powers. It has even been alleged that the Island was 
not settled till 1624, when Adrian Jorisen brought a dozen 
families in the ship " Eendracht," or " Unity." Others, equally 
good authorities, say that there never was any such ship as the 
"Eendracht" or "Unity," in these waters, and claim that the 
first settlement was made by Cornelius Jacobsen May with the 
ship " New Netherland." But as Captain Block had been driven 
ashore on Manhattan Island by the burning of his ship in 1613, 
and as he had built a yacht and gone cruising for pleasure and 
wild ducks in her around Long Island, we may fairly assume an 
earlier date. The interpretation of the word "settlement" proba- 
bly is the cause of the confusion. We know that Christiansen, 
when he came over in the " Fortune " somewhere about that 
time built houses or huts as a sort of an abiding place, and we 
can call that the first settlement. 

Then again as to the name, it is doubtful whether we are 
rightfully entitled to be the Island of Manhattan. On one side 
it is said that the name was derived from a tribe of Indians, on 
the other, that it was purely descriptive and meant "great sweet 
nice," and that the Indians rejoiced in the more impressive, if 
less euphonious name of Reckgawawancs— so possibly we ought 
to be on the Island of the Reckgawawancs; but as "great sweet 
nice " describes our Dutch city, we will cling to Manhattan. 
Nevertheless, it has to be admitted that this great Dutch city was 
hardly in a proper sense of the word a Dutch city at all. There 
never was any Mayor of New Amsterdam, and the first Mayor 
of New York was a Yankee out and out— one Thomas Willet 
of Plymouth, Mass. Gov. Stuyvesant, on February 2, 1653, 
erected New Amsterdam into a municipality, but as he would 
not allow it to elect its own Schout, nor indeed, to have any 
Schout proper at all, it could hardly be called a Dutch city, for 
how could a Dutch city exist without a Schout. And when it 
tried to elect one in 1654, its choice happening to fall on a man 
who had already been scalped by the Indians, it seemed to get 
discouraged and gave up the attempt. Stuyvesant loaned them 
his own, for he kept a private Schout, a Schout seeming to be a 
good thing to have in a family. You of course all know that the 



ro Early New York 

governing body of a Dutch city consists of three parts, the 
Schout, the Burgomasters and Schepens. I do not need to 
mention that. 

But leaving all this ancient history somewhat in the dark, we 
get at the substantial fact of the capture of the Island by the 
English, the creation of the city by the proclamation of Gov. 
Nicolls on June 12, 1665, and the appointment of the Yankee, 
Thomas Willett, mayor, one of those inflictions coming from the 
governor that have been followed by so many more from his 
successors at Albany. It was christened New York, but did not 
remain so long. 

Then followed its recapture by the Dutch, and its re-christening 
from both New Amsterdam and New York into New Orange, 
the only thing permanent being the word " new," so that while 
it is certainly ancient it was also ever " new." It only remained 
New Orange, however, about a year, and few people remember 
that it ever held that name at all. The last of the Dutch gover- 
nors, Gov. Colve, surrendered the whole of the New Nether- 
lands on February 8, 1674, they having been permanently ceded 
to England by the Treaty of Westminster. The name of New 
York was thereupon resumed, the charter restored, and the first 
native-born mayor, a good Dutchman, Stephanus Van Cortlandt, 
was elected in 1677. 

On the first day of Januar)', 1898, we had the last of the im- 
portant changes, the expansion of the city into the Greater New 
York, and the restoration of the old name of the " great sweet 
nice" Borough of Manhattan. 

" Old Things Are Best " ? Are they— who knows ? I am sure 
I don't. I may think so, but is not that thought pure prejudice ? 
Let us picture the old times and the old life. First look at the 
conformation of the island. The backbone just raised sufficiently 
above the level of the two noble rivers which washed its pebbly 
shores on the one side and the other ; the magnificent bay, a 
harbor fit for all the navies of the world, stretching away on the 
South to the limitless ocean beyond ; on the north, the funny 
little creek of Spuytden Duyvel, whose waters suggest its name 
just as Scotch whiskey suggests hot water and sugar ; the 
farms running down to these beautiful rivers where fish abounded 
so that Fishery Commissions were things beyond conception. 
Think of St. John's Park extending to the water's edge where 



Early New York ii 

the waves of the Hudson lapped its very shores. Think of 
my own ancestral farm in the Krippel Bush fronting on the 
East river, where the big bass, those of sixty and seventy pounds 
made their habitat and where the ancestral farms of many of 
you, my hearers, which were equally beautiful, were located. 
Manhattan was a Paradise of beauty and attractiveness, of whose 
charms I could discourse all night, but which I must leave to 
your imaginations. 

To reconstruct the exquisite old New Amsterdam home we 
must have the splendid, substantial and buxom Dutch Vrouw, 
first and always, for therein comes another of those ancient 
prejudices fast passing away that a wife is the first necessity for 
human happiness — a good wife, a loving wife and a sensible one, 
for those Dutch Vrouws were all that. So reconstruct the home 
with its big chimney, its bottle of Genever, mis-named schnapps, 
which is a German, not a Dutch term. The good man taking 
his rest after his day's work, and smoking his long clay pipe, 
De Goede Vrouw sewing or knitting and talking, for they were 
industrious women, those Goede Vrouws, and great talkers. 
They had their say on all important matters, although they put 
their husbands at the head of the house. The moral tone, in the 
sense of private purity, was absolutely unsurpassed. The best 
and unanswerable proof of this, is the fact that for a family to 
consist of less than nine children was rather discreditable. Why 
nine and not ten or eleven it is hard to say, unless perhaps after 
the example of the Muses. This lasted unbroken until the Eng- 
lish conquest, when the manners of the corrupt English court 
came, but even then fast life was confined to the ruling families, 
and the domestic virtues retired to the old stock as they do to- 
day. Extravagance and gallantry took their place among the 
little imitation court of the English governors, of men like Corn- 
bury, whose great delight it was to dress himself up like a woman, 
of Lovelace brought up in the fashionable gaiety which sur- 
rounded Charles the Second. 

Even in later days the same conditions existed down to the 
time of the Revolution, when Hamilton brought his French man- 
ners, betraying the wife to whom and to whose family he owed 
everything that he had or was, and when his political and per- 
sonal rival, Aaron Burr, equalled or surpassed him in his evil 
reputation and successes of gallantry. 



12 Early New York 

Historians have talked of our smuggling and piracy. Well, 
what of it, as the boys say in the street. Under the absurd laws 
of liberal Holland, New Amsterdam was not permitted to trade 
with any but her mother country ; it could not send a cargo to 
New England, nor to Virginia. To receive goods from either 
was smuggling in the eyes of the law. Does any one suppose 
that Dutchmen ar any other men would submit to such a regu- 
lation, and as for piracy, the greatest act of piracy ever com- 
mitted was when England captured New Amsterdam in a time 
of profound peace, descending upon it and its peaceful burghers 
when they were wholly unprepared. They have always been in 
the habit of calling our famous revolutionary hero, Admiral Paul 
Jones, a pirate because he gored their ox, so to speak, by defeat- 
ing their fighting ships. 

On the high seas, it is true, that New Amsterdamers pursued 
and captured the Spaniard, and brought occasionally a Spanish 
galleon into port, but whoever has read the history of the 
Eighty Years' War by the most ruthless nation of the world 
upon a little and harmless and peaceful country, and of the acts 
of inconceivable cruelty which were committed, will justify any 
retaliatory act of piracy. 

What if a few grandees were made to "walk the plank." 
Compare that to strapping men erect where water would drip 
on their heads drop by drop, hour after hour, till they went 
raving mad and died in agonies unspeakable. Men broken on 
the wheel, torn with red-hot pincers, starved to death over a 
refectory so that they might have the fumes of food which they 
were never to taste. Piracy was a pleasantry, a duty towards 
such a nation. There could as soon be peace and love between 
Hollanders and Spaniards as there can be between the South 
African Boers and the English who in their fatuous misconfidence 
believe that their merciless war upon women and their ruthless 
murder of children in the Transvaal will ever be forgotten or 
forgiven. 

But let us turn from these painful subjects. No city was more 
patriotic than ours. A German resident of New Amsterdam 
named Leisler was the first to refuse to pay duty on a cargo of 
wine before tea parties were popular. He summoned the first 
Colonial Congress and was hanged for treason on the ground 
facing the City Hall Park to the east. The first blood of the 



Early New York 13 

Revolution was shed on Golden Hill, part of Pearl street, by the 
" Liberty Boys," a patriotic organization, and about the raising 
of a liberty pole. During the Revolution the English again 
being able to enter our beautiful harbor, could suppress mani- 
festations of this patriotism, but could not destroy it. 

And how the city has changed ! The last hundred years have 
shown the greater part of that change. Up to that time quiet, 
respectable Philadelphia was the commanding city, Boston was 
a bustling place, always full of its own importance and doing 
things which the sober minded intelligence of New York and 
Philadelphia did not approve. A place where the " I am better 
than thou " feeling abounded, a home for nullification and 
secession, for interfering with slavery and other peoples business 
generally. It was not till the discovery of the ginning machine 
which made cotton king that New York sprang into first im- 
portance. Up to that time ships of three and four hundred tons 
were first-class vessels. King Cotton demanded better accommo- 
dations. Nothing less than a thousand tons would do for him. 
And so our deep harbor was utilized, and New York started. 
At about the same time the great Erie Canal was built through 
the energy of a Dutchman, for Dutchmen naturally loved canals, 
and the city grew and grew. Think of it, when State street was 
the fashionable residence and promenade. Could there be a 
finer spot in the world, facing the Battery that, facing the bay, 
was washed by its waves and perfumed by the breezes from the 
Jersey shores where petroleum factories were not. With the 
beautiful view in front of the Narrows, Nutten Island and the 
other little islands, and good fishing off the rocks where the 
Battery sea wall was to be. In that same State street lived 
Washington Irving, Robert Fulton, Stephen Whitney, and 1 
know not how many more. 

Is it worth while for me to follow the residential growth ? Up 
Broadway, clinging around Bowling Green even down to my 
early days, along Greenwich street and East and West Broad- 
way. Then leaping to Fourteenth street, and after that to Fifth 
avenue and on and on away up and up towards Harlem. 

As one of the best examples of the incredible progress of the 
city, take the schools. Previous to 1805 there were only two 
kinds ; private ones for pay, and charity schools maintained by 
the religious denominations. 



I4 Early New York 

In 1805, De Witt Clinton started the first chartered free school 
in the words—" The Society for establishing a free school in the 
City of New York, for the education of such poor children as do 
not belong to or are not provided for by any religious society." 
A pretty long title for a very little school which was first opened 
the following year, 1S06, in Bancker, now Madison street. In 1808 
the title was changed to the " Free School Society of the City of 
New York," and a commodious building for five hundred pupils 
was provided by the Common Council, money being then raised 
by the State for education, as it has been ever since. In 1815, 
the " Free School Society " got $3,708.14 for its share. In 1824 
the Society was placed wholly under the care of the Common 
Council and the latter excluded all religious schools from par- 
ticipation in the school moneys. In 1826, children who could 
afford to pay were required to do so. In 1829 a tax was first 
laid on the city exclusively for public education. In 1844 the 
common school system of the State was applied to New York. 
And in 1853 the Public School Society conveyed all its property 
to the Board of Education of the City of New York, who then 
consisted of 21 Commissioners and no Trustees, a system which 
has substantially existed till to-day. In that year the pupils 
numbered 43,740, and cost to teach $569,036.08. In the year 
1868, there were 96,000 pupils at a cost of $2,900,000, or thirty 
dollars a head. For the year 1904 the Department of Education 
demanded for its purposes the sum of $23,260,472.30. It is true 
that the Department of Education has been characterized by the 
Comptroller of the city as the most extravagantly managed of 
any, but the figures give an idea of the growth, even if it were 
properly and economically administered, of the public school 
system of the City of New York. 

Nothing shows the growth of a city more than the amount of 
taxes the citizens have to pay. In the early days there was dis- 
pute about taxation. Would that there was an equally rebel- 
lious spirit in these modern days. They were mostly indirect, 
however, on licenses, hotel and beer privileges, and the like, and 
the monopoly of bolting flour which had been granted to the city, 
was of vast value. Governor Stuyvesant was liberal in allowing 
his newly created city to settle pretty much for itself the amount 
and method of taxation. To-day, in this year of 1904, the 
assessable value of property for the purposes of taxation on 



Early New York 15 

Manhattan alone is three thousand five hundred millions on real 
estate, and three thousand eight hundred and ninety millions of 
personal property, while on corporations, banks, and so forth, 
there are about five hundred and forty millions. Practically 
eight thousand millions. It is true that under the blessings of 
a " Reform Administration," the amount was increased one thou- 
sand six hundred and fifty-eight millions in one year, with a 
view to generous expenditures, but still a fair estimate is over 
seven thousand millions, on a little island for which our wise 
ancestors paid twenty-four dollars, and in glass beads at that. 
But there were no white inhabitants here then and few red ones, 
and now there are three millions and over of the former, and the 
original huts of Christiansen and Jorisen have grown into struc- 
tures twenty-four stories high, till "the unearned increment" 
has become so large that it must appal Henry George's queer set 
of followers, if there are any left. 

There were no railroads in those olden days, none of those 
villainous iron tracks which always remind one of the way of 
good intentions. There were no steamboats, and you sailed 
placidly to Albany in three pleasant yachting days, Fulton not 
having completed the " Clermont" till 1807. The public parks, 
and even the private gardens were places to dream in, and friend 
met friends on the streets at every turn. And there was bowling 
around the Bowling Green. Now we have elevated railroads, 
are going to have underground abominations of travel, have 
steam lines and steamboats everywhere, have trolleys in the 
streets to the peril of our lives, have carriages, bicycles and auto- 
mobiles, and St. John's lovely park has been converted into a 
foul, grimy railroad station. In those olden days there were no 
women doctors, no women lawyers, no women's clubs, but only 
loving domestic wives to whom husband and children were all 
of life, and life's happiness, and who made their homes perhaps 
more comfortable than their advanced women sisters of to-day. 
The girls were gentle, modest, submissive and affectionate, they 
wore shoes with soles of paper, and had delicate appetites, and 
died of consumption. There was no skating, golfing nor horse- 
back riding, and the ubiquitous and aggressive shop girl of the 
present day had not been dreamed of. And the tedium of office 
life was not relieved by the presence of the pretty little lady 
stenographer. 



x 6 Early New York 

Was New York happier or better then than it is now ? Let 
each of my hearers answer to his or her own satisfaction. I am 
sure I do not know. When I began my address and looked at 
the beautiful women before me, I felt almost sorry that those 
beautiful women had not lived three hundred years ago, and all 
been blooming Dutch Vrouws. Now that I look at them again 
at the close of my discourse, I am so glad that they were not 
alive three hundred years ago, for they would have been badly 
shrivelled, if not wholly gone now, and what should we do, or 
what would the world be without them. 



I I 



mSm Y ° F C0NGRESS 

014 220 299 I 1 



